Re: The more mounts I add, the slower Nautilus becomes.

[Christian Neumair <cneumair gnome org>]

Am Montag, den 16.06.2008, 09:33 +0200 schrieb Chris Fanning:
> On Sun, Jun 15, 2008 at 12:54 AM, Christian Neumair
> <cneumair gnome org> wrote:
> > Am Donnerstag, den 12.06.2008, 15:28 +0200 schrieb Chris Fanning:
> >> I've got some samba shares mounted in my home directory.
> >> /home/user/shares/mountpoint(s)
> >> When I open Nautilus I've noticed that there is network activity
> >> between my desktop and the samba server(s).
> >> It happens all the time (not just when I'm opening the
> mointpoints).
> >> Just simply opening Nautilus at my home directory creates network
> >> traffic to all samba servers. (...)

> > A) Nautilus will try to list get the number of items in the mount
> > point's root directory, even if you are not displaying it. This is a
> > feature.
> >
> I am trying to imagine the benefits of examining ./shares/mount1 while
> opening /home/user/directory, why is it a feature?
> I've also noticed that any gnome app will provoke the same with the
> Open Dialog.

I was not entirely clear. The directory "mount1" from your example is
not listed, just "shares".

Listing "shares" already causes network traffic for all mounts. Just
mount a bunch of shares, launch a network sniffer like wireshark and
enter "ls" in the "shares" directory.

I am not an expert though when it comes to the gory details of UNIX
mounts. Maybe somebody out there knows when exactly network I/O will be
caused. All of this probably also depends on the FS module you use.

I can not give you any constructive suggestion, except to move the
contents of ~/shares to ~/shares/smb, which will at least circumvent the
directory listing of mount points.

> > B) You are using FUSE, or kernel mounts. However, for optimal
> > integration you should use GVFS mounts. Unfortunately, permanent
mounts
> > for remote shares are not yet available in GVFS (Christian Kellner
is
> > working on it, though), so this is not an option yet - unless you
add a
> > startup script that executes a set of gvfs-mount commands.
> >
> I haven't started using gfvs yet. But (please correct me if I'm
> wrong), gvfs is going to let me access these shares like kde does,
> "smb://server/share".

Exactly. It also lets you access all your GVFS mounts under ~/.gvfs with
convetional UNIX applications.

> 99% of the documents on the samba servers are ODF. From experience
> with KDE, at least until very recently, OpenOffice cannot open/save
> files to a folder opened in this manner. It reports I/O errors. We
> avoid this by mounting and umounting user shares on login/logout with
> pam-scripts.

Just FYI, OpenOffice will end up with GVFS support:
http://blogs.linux.ie/caolan/2008/05/01/ooo-gio-integration/

> Are you suggesting that this directory scanning will not happen if we
> continue to mount at login but upgrade to gvfs?

During the mount process, traffic will be carried out already. However,
it would at least not slow down loading of local directories. As I
pointed out: It is very unfortunate that we still do not have support
for permanent remote mounts (i.e. "volumes") across sessions in GVFS,
these would probably resolve your issues.


best regards,
 Christian Neumair

-- 
Christian Neumair <cneumair gnome org>